Improving Your Presentations
Your Morning Factoids: 32 million American adults are illiterate. An additional 21% (about 50 million) read below the 5th grade level. The average American can listen to a speech given at 210 words per minute without losing comprehension. People pay more attention to gestures than words.
Your Morning Advice: The simpler, slower and more expressive your presentation, the greater your chances of reaching a wider range of audiences.
In a fascinating analysis of presentation techniques, MarketingProfs, the marketing education site, carried a fascinating Infographic prepared by the presentation company Ethos3 .
Check out Presentation Power: How the 2016 Presidential Candidates Stack Up.
The Infographic makes clear that presentation success is about much more than words said. It’s also about word choice, delivery, body language, and hand gestures.
How do the presentation skills of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton measure up?
According to Ethos3, “Trump’s speaking level is at the fourth-grade level; Clinton’s is at the eighth-grade level.”
“Moreover, how fast (or slow) a speaker talks is crucial to an effective presentation. During interviews conducted earlier this year, Trump spoke at 220 WPM and Hillary at 110 WPM,” states Ethos3. “The average person can hear 150-160 words per minute and can listen to a speech given at 210 WPM without losing comprehension,” it adds.
Whether you’re following the U.S. presidential campaign or not, this is good advice for all of us. Whether presenting at conferences, briefing donors, reporting to your board, or even writing your donors, simpler is better.
Speaking of writing, you might want to revisit our earlier post: Fixing Hidden Leaks #1: How To Write Good.
Hopefully, every Agitator reader understands the importance of donors being able to read what you write. You can quickly and easily determine whether you’ve hit or missed the mark.
Included in your Word program is a robot called The Flesch-Kinkaid Grade Level Score. It measures the ease a donor will have reading your copy.
Here’s what master wordsmith Tom Ahern, who uses it in copy audits, has to say:
“Grade level and reading ease will also impact skimming. Speed-reading-friendly direct mail scores around the 6th-8th grade level.
“If a letter I’m writing scores above 8th grade, I automatically rewrite and lower my score.
“The Flesch-Kincaid grade level for your letter is 10, which is around Wall Street Journal country; while its Flesch reading ease score is 54. Neither is stellar for a piece of supposed correspondence, although the reading ease score is low-acceptable.
“Grade level — and the speed with which I can consume your text — are directly related. The lower the grade level of your letter, the faster I’ll read it.
“Grade level has nothing to do with vocabulary. A robot grades your prose in Flesch-Kincaid; it doesn’t understand what you’re saying. It’s only looking at the ratio of short to long: words, sentences, paragraphs. Shorter is faster. Low grade levels are faster.”
What slows readers down and frustrates their flow? Conjunctions. “And”…”With”…”So”…”But”.
Tom’s advice on the use of conjunctions: “Cease and desist. Or use them to start a sentence.”
Here’s how Tom illustrates his point:
“The work is hard, and the number of people who need help is large, and the world we live in is often “too busy to help.”
Flesch reading ease 82.8, Flesch-Kincaid grade 8.1
“The work is hard. The number of people who need help is large. And the world we live in is often “too busy to help.”
Flesch reading ease 100, Flesch-Kincaid grade 1.3
Type size also matters. So does the style of Font. A lot. Either or both can determine whether the donor responds or simply moves on in frustration.
If you’re dealing with a CEO or program officer who thinks complicated concepts, big words and technical jargon impresses donors or wins over prospects, you might want to share this post.
Roger
P.S. For posts on the power and effectiveness of infographics themselves for communicating with donors, check out this Canadian Red Cross infographic and these additional posts here and here.
P.P.S. This post has a Flesch Reading Ease Level of 57.2. A Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level of 8.3.
5 responses to “Improving Your Presentations”
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Excellent reminders Tom!
Grade reading level is important and adjusting it does work…
Great, simple, well explained post!
Early in my career, I did a lot of work and research with the OECD’s international literacy study (a new one was just released last year) and the results are shocking.
In the States and Canada, around 50% of adults have below average literacy skills. The report measures along this continuum – so not just about can a person read or write, but how well can they use information to solve problems, and are they able to do this in a digital environment. This doesn’t mean that almost half the population can’t read and write. It means almost half of them have trouble doing anything with the information they are receiving from the world.
We’re really talking about people’s ability to deal effectively with information and use it in a way that helps them fully take part in, share in and give to the world around them.
So for nonprofits, it really needs to be more than just readability (though that is a crucial starting point.) It needs to be about a deeper kind of interactivity.
And overall literacy skills decrease with age, so when we’re talking about those who are most likely to be our donors, these individuals are the most likely to struggle if what we are sharing with them isn’t clear, simple, and easy to interact with.
It all comes back to knowing and being considerate of your audience. Plain language benefits every reader, regardless of their literacy abilities.
I SO agree! Thanks for taking a stand for SIMPLE writing!
Too many beginning fundraisers write appeal letters are complex, dense and hard to read. The ASK is buried at the end of the 4th paragraph. Drives me bananas!
I consulted with Reader’s Digest back in 1986. One thing has not changed-no editorial copy beyond 6th grade reading level!
Two of the most successful appeal letters I’ve written to date came in at a Grade 4 and a Grade 7.4. But it’s about much more than people being “able” to read what you write … even people who read at a high level have been shown to respond better, remember more, and read longer when copy is written at a lower grade level.
This is a critical point to make especially when the Powers That Be feel that your Grade 8 letter will make them look stupid — it doesn’t.